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A Nigerian atheist released from the psychiatric ward to which his Muslim family committed him by force said yesterday that he was getting death threats for blaspheming against Islam.
Mubarak Bala, a 29-year-old chemical processing engineer, said he is in hiding in northern Nigeria, where the Sharia law holds and some interpretations have blasphemy punishable by death.
“People are threatening me, I mean life-threatening threats,” he told The Associated Press (AP) in a telephone interview. He said he was too frightened of drawing attention and wouldn’t allow an AP video journalist or photographer to come to his hiding place.
Bala said that since he renounced Islam and declared himself an atheist, he has not only lost the trust of his father and elder brother, but many friends.
“Most of my friends condemn me and tell me I am bound for hell and that in an Islamic state, I would be killed. Blasphemy is a serious thing here,” said Bala, who described himself on his Twitter page as an ex-Muslim.
Most of the north is in the throes of an insurgency by extremists bent on turning the entire country into an Islamic state under Sharia law, though half of Nigeria’s 170 million people are Christian. The uprising has killed thousands and increased tensions between Muslims and Christians in a country where adherents of both faiths are passionately religious.
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